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Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Is a gamer someone who only plays Xbox or PS3 Games, like Call of
Duty and Madden? Sure. However, gamers have diversified over the years.
In the early years, gamers were, by and large, mature adults. Sure,
children and teenagers played Pong and Space Invaders, but casual games
that catered to younger audiences didn’t really appear until Nintendo
released the NES.

Over the generations of consoles (and the PC, the poor thing), gamers
have largely been mature, male adults and teenagers. Now, I’m not
saying they composed the entirety of the gaming community, but they were
most often stereotyped into the title “gamer.” Why males are more
likely to become gamers isn’t something I can sum up on my own.
Nowadays, gamers can be defined in much more diverse terms, even if said
gamers don’t consider themselves “gamers.”

With the rising popularity of the Wii console, iPhones and their
Android competitors, gaming has diversified. If you play Candy Crush
with every second of your spare time, you’re probably a gamer. If you
only play Call of Duty and Madden, you’re probably a gamer. If you play
indie games, you’re probably a gamer.

“Gamer” is still a term portioned out to more “hardcore” players.
People who play any MMO are considered gamers. For the most part,
spending more than 4 hours a day playing games marks you as a gamer.

So, what does that mean?

Today, as I’ve said, most people who own a smartphone, Xbox, PS3,
Wii, PC, or any game-carrying device can be given the title “gamer.”
Yet, that’s not how most people view the term. Imagine you meet a new
person. You’re sharing info about your lives, when they ask, “What do
you like to do?” You respond non-chalantly, “I play games.” The response
you receive can vary wildly, from enthusiastic “Yeah! That’s awesome!”
to “What a waste of time.”

I am of the opinion that games have been a benefit to the cultures of
the world. Creativity is fueled by gamers and developers. It’s an art
of expression, story, and visual experience. That is how I feel.
Do I sometimes think, “Man, I could be doing something else.”? Sure.
However, I don’t regret the many hundreds of hours I put into SWG, World
of Warcraft, and countless other games in my life. I’ve learned from
them, if nothing else.

So, if you’re a gamer, you don’t need to feel shame from non-gamers
(whomever they are). Gaming, and what you gain from it, is entirely up
to you.

On that note, if you stay up 24+ hours playing video games and
drinking energy drinks, I am not responsible for any health problems.
It’s all up to you, after all.

Friday, November 20, 2015

It supplies you major adaptability to check out an incredibly well
realized world as well as notifies a story that’s grasping, thrilling,
and darkly comic. It is a jump forward in historical class for the
series, as well as there is no mechanical aspect of the gameplay that
hasn’t already been enhanced over Grand Theft Auto IV.
Yet every one of
that gets all new point of views this year, as GTA V makes its method to
the Xbox One and PS4. There was lots of hype around Grand Theft’s
brand-new first-person perspective on next-gen gaming consoles, and the
attribute meets all that babble. It changes the ways you play Grand
Theft Auto, and also probably also transforms the method you think about
killing in computer game. In addition its a bold move for Rockstar to
get involved with the occurrence of GTA 5 money cheat
and related stuff in the game. Still, you could just quibble a whole
lot with those troubles, provided the overall size of GTA V, and the PS4
obtains a spectacular modicum of touch in that the controller speaker
is taken advantage of for mobile phone calls, making factors simply a
modicum of a lot much more immersive.

This stays the exact same huge game it was a year back, with 3
protagonists, its durable Los Santos as well as the suitable story in
the franchise activity. It’s an exceptional tale that pokes ingenious
fun at an excellent many subjects, keeping you continually mesmerized
from beginning to complete. There’s a lot to do, from playing paparazzi
to your regular car chases to some far more engaged tale objectives. You will get as many gold as you want as gold are the most important resources in Game Of War we make sure that the user will get the best Game Of War Gold Hack so he won’t try to buy gold anymore. You can add up to unlimited gold in your Game Of War but we will ask you to use two or three times before you will add all that amount as if you will appear in the game servers as you have unlimited gold it will be kind strange.

GTA identifies its bodily brutality a whole lot a lot more visibly
than Space Invaders as well as Halo and hence has a far better angle on
not simply being intense, nevertheless reviewing violence itself. In
previous installments the game was set up on parody, indicating the
physical violence in American culture as well as our very own gleeful
skepticism the exceptionally inclinations that make GTA computer game so
popular. However this newest variant has actually included an aspect
that carries it through apology and also over another thing. It appears
crazy, possibly, yet Grand Theft Auto IV introduces a reliable
declaration on the immigrant experience, as well as the violent
procedure of adaptation.

Saturday, November 14, 2015

It's all downhill from here - and we couldn't be happier

Every score could be higher. Every race faster. Every combo extended.
EA's thrilling stunt racer reboot delivers dissatisfaction like little
else - fuelling bittersweet OCD-style replay loops of thrilling depth.
The main solo mode, World Tour, lasts seven hours, yet acts as a
glorious tutorial. No sooner does the 'final' cutscene roll than Explore
mode taunts you into a fresh challenge: 0/153 drops completed. Each
drop is a three-minute-ish track, split into bronze, silver and gold
challenges. The original SSX had just eight tracks, and still offered
near-limitless replay potential.

Quantity is no substitute for craft, however, and after 20 hours
we're unsure if SSX offers the sculpted track genius of its
predecessors. In SSX Tricky, we were finding previously unthinkable
shortcuts and ramps months after release. Our gut says the gargantuan
new SSX must lack such nuance, but most tracks are yielding surprises
multiple plays later.

Initially, SSX is intuitive and bewildering. We plump for the new
control scheme, holding the right stick down to 'charge' jumps, using
the left stick to pre-wind twists. In mid-air, the right stick grabs the
board for tweaks - for example, tap right to use your right hand, and
rotate the stick 90 degrees to grab the nose. It makes sense, plus you
can perform wild tricks without remotely mastering its subtleties.

Tracks have never been so intense, pulsing with ramps, ridges and
rails. No sooner do you land than you're jumping again - in the
milliseconds of reaction time, combos are made or broken, races won or
lost. The seamless transition of thought into deed creates an almost
Zen-like flow - over-think your grab or spin, and a clumsy slam often
follows.

SKI TRIPPING

SSX thrives in its intensity, rewarding skill with seamlessly
integrated audio and visuals. Run DMC's iconic 'It's Tricky' hijacks the
soundtrack when you land a dazzling Uber move, as flares and scenery
glow.
Nail a Super Uber trick and the scenery reforms ahead of you,
creating subtle yet useful new ramps to maintain your combo. Imagine
PS2's hypnotic-music-shooter Rez - with it's 'union of the senses' -
allied to the twitch-shooter, reflex feel of multiplayer Call of Duty...
only with fewer robot babies and swearing Arizonan preteens.

Wiping out really hurts - the colours bleed away, the soundtrack
crashes and your senses mute. Handily, you can rewind time and keep the
combo flowing, but it also rewinds your score, avoiding spamming of key
scenery. In races, rewinding only affects you, allowing rivals to surge
ahead. Combos aren't multiplied by the number of tricks you perform in a
row, but by your 'flow' - the faster and more varied your run, the
higher the multiplier. You get more points for one lengthy, stylish grab
than three fiddly grabs in one leap.

World Tour features nine real-world regions split into multiple tracks,
with a signature deadly descent. They're like boss battles against the
elements, and mostly provide welcome variety to the race / trick
structure. Highlight? Fitz Roy, Patagonia, gives you a squirrel suit so
you can glide, Batman-like, over chasms - it sounds absurd, but it's
well balanced, and surprisingly challenging.

Mt Everest is less fun, asking you to tackle thin air with an oxygen
tank. It amounts to pressing R1 every few seconds to stop blacking out -
more annoyance than challenge.

Veterans will sail through World Tour, and only three tracks out of
more than 30 gave us extended problems - look out for Zombies With
Jetpacks in New Zealand. Nailing a bronze medal is hard enough, while a
gold medal seems impossible.

One fellow journo actually felt the Explore mode challenges were
unfairly hard, and the opponents too cheesy - you seem unable to keep
up, even by following the same line. Having sunk hours into Explore
mode, we can confirm this theory is, to put it politely, bollocks.
They're supposed to feel that way, certainly at first. After sinking in a
few hours, levelling up the right characters (Alex is best for races,
for instance, or Mac for tricks), then unlocking the double-perk slots,
buying stat-boosting boards, hitting every speed-pumping flare and every
obscure shortcut... after all that, we creamed 30 seconds off times we
once thought unbeatable. That's not to say it can't be frustrating -
maddening, even - and many won't have the gumption to persevere. Shame.

Other gripes? Too few moments really stick in the memory. It's all good -
often excellent - but there are few dramatic tonal shifts, either
visually (like SSX's mental Tokyo Megaplex) or structurally (like SSX3's
astonishing 30- minute final run). Plus, it's hard to bail unless you
really hog a grab, and your rider 'snaps' to rails too magnetically.

The loading times between tracks are minimal, but still puncture the
flow; the Thin Air challenge is duff, and the trick system - while
incredible - is only as exciting as it was back in 2001's superb SSX
Tricky.
That's the bind. As a reboot, SSX teeters between nostalgia and
evolution, and perhaps falls fractions short either side. Tricky fans
will miss leaping through windows in the skyscrapers of Mercury City,
yet feel slightly numbed by the familiarity of board-around-neck Super
Ubers.

It's pitched between Tricky's insane stunts / contrived architecture
and the quasi-reality of SSX3's mountains, and it almost nails the best
of both. Office buzz says newcomers will adore it, seduced by the speed
and sensory impact - think Burnout meets Skate. Whatever your skill, SSX
makes you feel insanely good, flattering your skills and rewarding
improvisation. Its old-school core has been invigorated by the right
stick controls and audio-visual makeover, with the Ridernet (like
Autolog) system keeping you up to date with friends' scores, times and
activities - there's always something to do.

Whether this is worth 90 percent or more depends on your appetite for
perfection - to strive for gold, to find every Geotag, or to spend weeks
crafting combo lines when online foes edge you out. Until the community
grows, its impossible to tell if it will gather that momentum, or if a
handful of elite players will score so freakishly high, no one else will
want to compete. The Clash Of Kings Hack Tool is currently the best hack service available on the net which allows players to start generating free Gold, Silver, Wood and Stone in their Clash Of Kings in game accounts.

We can groan about minor quirks, or the contradictory forces of
nostalgia and ennui, but that would be overthinking it - and if SSX
preaches anything, it's to commit to your instincts.

In the moment, when you're busting out some lunatic set of flips and
grabs over a 200ft dam in New Zealand, the screen flush with colour as
Flux Pavillion roars through the speakers, it's hard not to think that
you're playing the most exciting game, well, ever. Innovative yet
familiar, accessible yet deep, realistic yet absurd - it's a game torn
between risk and reward. You know - the place SSX always felt best.

Friday, November 13, 2015

In many ways Asura's Wrath is a passion project for the studio; a rare
opportunity to break out of the confines of working with licensed
material to create something original. It's all the more surprising then
to find that it doesn't actually stray too far from its wheelhouse with
this new found freedom.

Like it's previous titles Asura's Wrath will truly strike a chord with a
very specific audience; the type that grin with a semi-psychotic glee
every time Bruce Banner loses it, the type that punched the air when
Goku turned super Saiyajin for the first time and smacked Frieza around,
and most of all the type that stared slack-jawed as Naruto finally
unleashed his Bijuu Cloak to stomp Orochimaru.

But that doesn't mean others should dismiss it, Asura's Wrath is a
game that relishes in its own ridiculousness, it seizes every
opportunity to jump to next illogical extreme and does it with such
gusto that you just have to respect it. While you might not be able to
appreciate the oddball characters and melodramatic story you'll find it
hard to tear yourself away from the visual spectacle, and on those
grounds nothing comes close to what it offers.

RAGE OF THE GODS

The game follows the rage-driven quest of betrayed demi-god Asura,
who falls victim to the twisted ambitions of 'The Seven Deities', a
group scheming to rid the world of the impure Gohma by harvesting souls
from their human followers and powering a giant laser beam firing space
Buddah. Yes, you read that right.

The only problem is that Asura's daughter, a powerful priestess named
Mithra, is the key to the plan, which doesn't sit well with him. His
protests earn him a murdered wife, kidnapped daughter and a trip to the
underworld all courtesy of the maniacal General Deus. This is best Game Of War Hack - cheats app ever made! You can get unlimited Gold very fast and free by using this amazing app. Centuries later
the sheer intensity of Asura's anger brings him back to life, and he
returns to a decayed world where people pray to cruel gods and blindly
offer themselves up as sacrifices.

Someone inclined to could make a case that there's an underpinning
message about religion and god, that despite his frightening power Asura
is relatable as a father that will let nothing stop him from rescuing
his daughter, but ostensibly it's all set up to let Asura hunt down his
wrongdoers and wantonly destroy anything and everything in his path.
Which is exactly what he does. During the six or so hours it takes to
see the campaign through you'll partake in some of the most ludicrously
awesome set-pieces ever put into a video game.

You'll have a punch up with a rotund god that grows so big the tip of
his index finger can crush the planet. You'll square off on the moon
with a battle-hardened warrior wielding a sword long enough to pierce
the earth all the way through. You'll fly around space firing lasers out
of your six mechanical arms to thin out space faring Ghoma forces. In
one of the game's quieter moments you'll drink sake and battle the urge
to ogle the ample bosoms of a hot spring attendant, but that brief
interlude nonchalantly segues into chunks of a planet being cleaved off.

ANGER MANAGEMENT

It all looks absolutely stunning thanks to the mash-up of sci-fi and
Asian mythology that informs the blindingly colorful world and bad ass
character designs, and also because of the incredible animation work. If
nothing else, CyberConnect2's Ultimate Ninja games are known for their
visual fidelity and animation quality, and Asura's Wrath's is
undoubtedly the studio's best effort to date.

This impeccable level of presentation comes at the cost of serious
gameplay sacrifices. Calling Asura's Wrath a game in the traditional
sense is a stretch. You'll be watching more often than playing, and when
you're given agency it's mostly in quick-time events. Even then failure
to match the on-screen prompts never impacts progression, so you're
only doing it to avoid poor grading at the end of each episode, or
because you might find it satisfying.

Asura's Wrath's reliance on cut-scenes is a shame because tucked away
in between these lavishly produced cinematics is a very competent
third-person brawler. It might not be as deep as contemporaries such as
God of War 3, Bayonetta or Devil May Cry 4, but what it lacks in depth
it makes up for in style and fluidity.

During these arena-based segments Asura has light and heavy attacks
as well as projectiles. Hammering light attacks dishes out a flurry of
attacks usually ending in launching the enemy across the battlefield.
Holding the light attack button down sends Asura chasing after to
deliver follow up attacks. It's a simple mechanic but it looks cool and
feels good thanks to punchy sound effects and plenty of feral grunting
from Asura. To see more detail and try this Game Of War Hack Tool visit our website http://gameofwarhackcheats.com/

Heavy attacks are used sparingly, usually only for crowd control due
to a cool down period. Its primary use is to deliver cinematic attacks
on downed enemies to finish them off, so being overzealous with it can
needlessly draw out battles and run the risk of getting killed.

All of this is in service of filling up a bar which represents
Asura's rage, once completely filled the Japanese Hulk flips out and
activates the Burst ability, kicking off the next cut scene. In effect
this means that battles only last as long as it takes for you to fill
the bar, and if you're good enough to quickly exploit patterns, avoid
damage, and land counters regularly that can be not long at all.

Asura's Wrath also has plenty of Panzer Dragoon-esque on rails
segments peppered in, they add a little more variety to the experience
and introduce a few amusing scenarios of their own. Our favourite is
chasing down a demon gorilla that's nabbed a damsel; an unintentional
homage to Donkey Kong perhaps.

CyberConnect2 has clearly taken a gamble and consciously opted to
shove gameplay aside to tell a story with no expense spared in its
presentation. This is most apparent in the way it's structured; Asura's
Wrath is comprised of 19 episodes, each lasting around 20 minutes with
mid-episode breaks complete with bumpers on both sides, a preview of the
next episode and gorgeous artwork accompanied by text to provide
context or alternative perspectives for the episode's events.

While we can confidently say each episode of Asura's Wrath offers an
unparalleled cinematic experience, its gameplay is too transient and
insubstantial, which makes it a hard sell at £40. Were it not for the
steep asking price we'd recommend this unequivocally, especially to fans
of manga, anime or anyone interested in seeing what true masters of
Japanese animation can do.

Few games divide opinion like Dynasty Warriors.
This isn't Marmite gaming; this is Marmite smeared on floral gums being
eaten by Val Kilmer (to a Randy Newman soundtrack).

Detractors dismiss Koei's battlefield sim as button-mashing with men
in silly hats. Fans, on the other hand, like being a one-man army and
doing it in a silly hat. Good/bad news: with its four-player focus,
Dynasty Warriors VS has more silly hats than ever.

Dynasty Warriors VS is a companion series to Samurai Warriors (of 3DS's
Chronicles fame). Where Samurai focuses on Japanese history, Dynasty
retells China's Romance Of The Three Kingdoms. It retells it in the
medium of hack 'n' slash, rendering complex battlefield manoeuvres as
A-to-B murder sprees. Churning through generic troops whittles down the
rival warlord's influence on the battlefield, making him vulnerable in a
climactic one-on-one.

With battles traditionally lasting upwards of 20 minutes, the format
isn't a natural candidate for multiplayer fun. To remedy this, Omega
Force re-imagine the battlefield as a race to kill an AI general. Should
warlords leg it to reach the target first? Or should they focus on
seizing garrisons and strengthening their support army? Commanding
certain buildings grants statistical boosts to the entire army - or can
the effect be simulated by getting to power-ups first?

OMEGA MEN

Striking a balance of speed and power is at this game's heart. But
what good is a heart without formidable fists to pump blood to?
Recognising that their combat is too broad to satisfy as a straight man-on-man fighter, Omega Force introduce
Musou Rush. Launching this special attack on a rival triggers a race to
input a sequence of button prompts and analogue stick tweaks. The
limber-fingered warlord who taps through first lands a devastating hit.

Co-operative play is also supported, with two-on-two and three-on-one
options. Though who's stupid enough to volunteer to be the one against
three? Allies can launch team attacks, special magics triggered when two
characters stand side-by-side.

Whether you're a fan or not, there's no denying the Warriors games treat
their followers well. Samurai Warriors is the only3DS title to deliver
regular SpotPass content a year after release, a trick Dynasty Warriors
promises to continue.
Fingers crossed we'll be inundated with a steady flow of silly hats...

Thursday, November 12, 2015

Also clever: the turn-based battle system, which allows you to moderate
the strength of your attack. Naturally, there's a caveat to you
selecting 'total obliteration' every time - a more forceful blow means
you need to wait longer for your next turn. In theory this should allow
you to get a feel for a foe before dishing out the pain.

Elsewhere, combat reverts to the JRPG formula - every enemy belongs to
one of three elemental alignments, with each element strong against one
type and weak to another. Handily, everything seems to be colour-coded,
so you can plan attacks in advance when approaching a gang of nasties.

THE CLOTHES SHOW

The one exception to the elemental rule is the white-haired girl seen
in all the screenshots so far. Curiously, you escort her at times and
control her at others. Occasionally she'll look out of the screen and
address you directly, while battle scenes are viewed from a first-person
perspective, your attacks flying from the side of the screen as if
hurled by unseen hands. Then you'll get to control the flimsily attired
heroine, guiding her through labyrinths she seems entirely ill-equipped
to inquisitively skip around.

Away from the dungeoneering you can try your hand at fashion design,
with an extensive costume customiser that allows you to transfer image
data to and from your PC to decorate the girl's dress. Designs are
displayed on a silhouetted mannequin oddly reminiscent of Project Rub,
and you can swap costume data with other users. Those so inclined can
also change the colour of her undergarments, just in case you'd
forgotten you were playing a Japanese game.

Given the lack of genuinely hefty 3DS titles so far (Ocarina aside),
we're chuffed to hear that completing the game should take around 40
hours, and there are four difficulty settings to add replay value, with -
hurrah! - a skip button to whizz through dialogue and story sequences.
It might have been gazumped by Resi and Metal Gear as 3DS's prettiest
game, but this promises a winning blend of style and substance.

There are plenty of people, though, who run screaming from all the
Tolkienesque trappings so often found in RPGs, though. If, like them,
you feel nothing but disdain for orcs, goblins and elves, Risen 2: Dark
Waters might reaffirm your faith. It's a conventional RPG, but with a
welcome pirate theme.

In terms of pedigree, it's not exactly Mass Effect: its developer,
Piranha Bytes, is based in Germany, and it will be published by the
small but perfectly formed Deep Silver. The same team brought us the
original Risen in 2009, which didn't prove to be a wholly satisfactory
exercise: Risen was generally acclaimed for its subject matter and
RPG-rigour, at least on the PC, but it suffered badly from a hamfisted,
ugly port to the Xbox 360. Luckily, we've now managed to play through a
couple of bits of Risen 2, on the Xbox 360, so are well placed to assess
it in anticipation of its late-April release.

Drunken pirate fun

Before we got our paws on Risen 2, Deep Silver brand manager Pete
Brolly took us through some of its key aspects - handily, given that
they wouldn't necessarily be obvious when jumping into two segments of
the game. He explained that Risen 2 has a standalone story, which takes
place a year or so after the first game.
Again, you take on the role of a nameless hero, this time tasked with
infiltrating a group of pirates, who appear to constitute the only
section of society equipped with a weapon sufficiently powerful to take
on the Titans, which are threatening mankind. The action spans three
tropical islands, although we only explored one, called Tacarigua. Some
storyline continuity from the first game is provided by Patty, who spent
the first game looking for her father, Captain Steelbeard - both
feature this time around.

Brolly added that there are two factions in the game - Inquisition
and Natives. Both pretty self-explanatory, and you can choose to align
yourself with either. Since you can only learn new skills from
non-player characters, those who want to achieve proficiency with
muskets and the like would be well advised to join the Inquisition,
whereas those interested in exercising Voodoo should check out the
Natives.

That voodoo that you do

Brolly proceeded to demonstrate some of the fun that could be had
with a bit of voodoo. You can, for example, take a hair from a
character, use that to fashion a voodoo doll and then use that to take
control of the character, in order to fulfil quests. Brolly also
demonstrated how to use voodoo to get two nearby enemies - he used the
example of gorillas - to fight each other rather than you.

He then showed a key element of the game: Dirty Tricks. This proved
invaluable in combat: hitting the right bumper brings up a wheel with
various abilities that can be easily triggered, such as an auto-aimed
pistol-shot when you're in the middle of a swordfight.

Each Dirty Trick has a cool-down period before you can trigger
another, and the wheel includes the ability to take a swig of rum, which
restores your health. Another, amusing Dirty Trick is the ability to
unleash a parrot which flies around targeted enemies and distracts them.
You can also send out a monkey kept in your pocket, to scope out areas,
access small spaces and stealthily steal items. If he is killed,
though, you'll have to buy a new one.

Deep Silver has clearly improved the classic RPG side of the game in
comparison with its predecessor: Brolly explained that Risen 2 contains
far more equipment for players to collect, each item of which improves
different attributes, and through the skills you learn from NPCs, you
can specialise, for example in throwing or slashing weapons, or
different types of muskets.

You can also pick crew members - who might specialise in melee
attacks or healing - to accompany you on trickier missions. The
swordfighting has also been rendered much more controllable, with stick
movements determining the direction of your slashing, so it's much
easier to take on multiple enemies in Risen 2 than in the first game.

The hands-on consisted of exploring two areas of Tacarigua, with the
starting points defined by launching pre-saved games. The first put us
in a village occupied by pirates, with our mission being to infiltrate
our way onto Captain Steelbeard's crew by doing the sort of things that
pirates do - that is, drinking, fighting and pillaging.

The first striking aspect of the game that emerged is that it is
definitely shooting for an adult audience, presumably with an 18 or, at a
pinch, 15 rating. That's because it contains some of the finest
swearing we've come across in a game for years - as it should, given
that it's attempting to replicate the experience of being a pirate.
Before picking up a mission from Captain Steelbeard's deputy, Booze, we
went for a wander around the inevitable tavern, where we had fun
conversing with some gloriously flirty and bawdy barmaids. The barmaids
can also teach you conversational persuasion skills.

Eventually, we were assigned to follow one of Steelbeard's crew, who
wandered to a nearby bay for an illicit rendezvous with a Sunken One - a
half-man, half-sea creature, seeking information about Steelbeard and
his crew. After being spotted, a swordfight ensued, and having
dispatched both parties, we returned to the village, to claim some
respect from Steelbeard. But we still had to perform further tasks to
prove our pirate credentials.

A spot of exploring led us to a hilariously deaf old codger who was
also a musket expert. This gave us the chance to investigate the game's
skills-learning mechanic. Once we had managed to communicate to the old
git that we wanted him to teach us how to handle a musket, we were given
the chance to impress him by playing a simple shooting-gallery
mini-game, in which objects like coconuts and bottles were thrown from
the left-hand side of the screen, and we had to hit them in mid-air.
Once we'd done well enough in that, some gold changed hands (in Risen 2,
you invariably have to pay to learn skills), and we could now shoot
muskets. We also bought a musket from the old guy, and could even have
purchased blueprints for building our own guns.

On returning to the village, we had to wrap up a couple more missions
before gaining Steelbeard's acceptance, one of which involved
swordfighting a notably pugnacious pirate (from whom extra swordfighting
skills could be learned) and the other involving stealing some rum.
Finally, Steelbeard was prepared to grant us the status of fully fledged
pirate.

Fraternising with the natives

The second save game took us into the heart of Tacarigua's jungle, on
the trail of a native village which had hooked up with another faction
of pirates said to be in possession of the only weapon which could take
on the Titans. The action started in the company of Patty and Captain
Steelbeard; after dealing with monkeys and assorted jungle wildlife, we
reached a river on the outskirts of the native village, at which point
we were left on our own.

Again, as when we were trying to join Steelbeard's crew, the native
village acted as a hub from which to undertake missions which result in
gaining the natives' trust, as well as that of the one representative of
the other pirate crew stationed in the village. Quests involved things
like killing an alligator in order to help native women who were
collecting plants and herbs, and panning for gold.

We also embarked on a bit of cave exploration, in search of jade -
the usual array of giant spiders and the like had to be dispatched. Even
the natives of the Shaganumbi tribe we encountered tended to indulge in
pretty humorous dialogue, and once we had gained the trust of the
Shaganumbi, we were able to learn voodoo. Although, at some point in the
game, you will have to decide whether to align yourself with the
natives (thereby acquiring voodoo skills) or the Inquisition (which
brings vastly improved firearms skills).

We found Risen 2 deeply enjoyable: structurally, it's a conventional
RPG, but it felt like a particularly well designed one. It's also
pleasantly amusing, and the pirate subject matter is great - who didn't
dream of being a pirate when they were a kid. There was one major
question-mark, though: the code we played wasn't exactly the slickest,
with notable jerkiness and juddering of animations and movement.

Deep Silver assured us that a newer build already exists which is much
smoother, and that between now and late April, when the game is
scheduled to arrive, Piranha Bytes will work exclusively on polish and
slickness, having finished all other aspects of Risen 2. We sincerely
hope that the final game, on the consoles (on the PC, jerkiness isn't an
issue) overcomes that problem, as it's undoubtedly great fun to play
and should generate a cult following among lovers of conventional yet
quirky RPGs.